A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin

TLDR

SARS‑related coronaviruses have been identified in bats, and some can infect humans. The study aims to identify and characterize a novel coronavirus (2019‑nCoV) responsible for an acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Wuhan, China. Full‑length genome sequences were obtained from five patients early in the outbreak. The outbreak, beginning on 12 December 2019, had 2,794 confirmed cases and 80 deaths by 26 January 2020, and genomic analysis showed the virus is 79.6% identical to SARS‑CoV, 96% to a bat coronavirus, uses ACE2 for entry, and can be neutralized by convalescent sera.

Abstract

Abstract Since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 18 years ago, a large number of SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs) have been discovered in their natural reservoir host, bats 1–4 . Previous studies have shown that some bat SARSr-CoVs have the potential to infect humans 5–7 . Here we report the identification and characterization of a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which caused an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans in Wuhan, China. The epidemic, which started on 12 December 2019, had caused 2,794 laboratory-confirmed infections including 80 deaths by 26 January 2020. Full-length genome sequences were obtained from five patients at an early stage of the outbreak. The sequences are almost identical and share 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV. Furthermore, we show that 2019-nCoV is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus. Pairwise protein sequence analysis of seven conserved non-structural proteins domains show that this virus belongs to the species of . In addition, 2019-nCoV virus isolated from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of a critically ill patient could be neutralized by sera from several patients. Notably, we confirmed that 2019-nCoV uses the same cell entry receptor—angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2)—as SARS-CoV.